[This essay is a draft of an op-ed that I wrote shortly after James Levine’s death was announced on March 17, 2021. It partially addresses the New York Times’ coverage of Mr. Levine. I submitted this op-ed to the Times but they did not respond.]
I was, at the time, an aspiring conductor growing up in Savannah, GA. I’m guessing I was 17, as I was in the driver’s seat, ferrying a much older musician, a friend of a music teacher, to the airport to fly back to New York City. This person knew I was an aspiring conductor. They had some connection to James Levine and offered to introduce me to him. While doing so, this person said, “keep in mind that you are pleasant to look at,” and that I should be careful when dealing with Levine.
I did not follow up on the offer, but the interaction stayed with me. Twenty-five years later, I take two things away from it. First, that the state of the classical music industry at the time (and that we have inherited today) was so toxic that a chance at an early career breakthrough came in the same breath as an ostensibly helpful, but rather offhand, tip about a sexual predator. Second, this may have been the moment that first revealed to me that the classical music industry is something deeply flawed and problematic, its leaders the recipients of tremendous privilege, Exhibit A of what bell hooks has called the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (which George E. Lewis invokes regularly in relation to the new music field).
Conductors have too much power. Not merely in rehearsals or artistic planning, say, but in public imagination, with administrators, with critics, etc. Along these lines, I believe a lot of the discourse surrounding Levine commits a category error. It’s a mistake to conflate the quality of his musicianship (clearly there can be no objective evaluations, but I’m willing to concede something general, like that he was a “a really good musician”) with other aspects of his life. Conductor as arm-waver/rehearser/performer and conductor as public figure, wielder of power and influence, etc. are not the same thing, though they are commonly assumed to be; we ought to interrogate critically the conventional wisdom that the latter flows directly from the former. A human is a lot of things. Speaking personally, I’m a pretty decent conductor but not a particularly good cook. Obviously, my cooking abilities are not socio-criminal problems, thus not relevant to institutions I’m a part of. However, serial sexual assault is very, very relevant. The genius myth, tragically, conflates all of these different characteristics in a mystical soup that only serves to excuse the worst behavior by the worst people. (A. Z. Madonna has recently written about Levine as a case-study in the dangers of genius-worship culture.)
Put another way, not only do conductors have too much power, but many people overestimate or misunderstand what they actually do, strictly speaking, in their role as conductor. There is nothing inherent in the qualities of a good conductor that makes child rape any less unacceptable. It isn’t some metaphysical truth that in order to continue to rehearse and perform effectively, a conductor needs to abuse minors. Indeed, as a number of people have noted—and it’s unbelievable that we even have to say this—there are plenty of good conductors out there who don’t molest children. And if you find yourself thinking something like, ‘but none of those conductors could have achieved the heights of Levine’s performances,’ ask yourself what your evidence is. How could you prove this counter-factual?
This is the logic Levine apologists really seem to be suggesting, reduced to its simplest: systematically enabling and protecting a serial child molester was worth it because it may have produced somewhat more aesthetic enjoyment for the patrons of the institutions he was involved with. My claim here is that this trade-off is not only clearly evil but also fallacious.
If you are one of these patrons, a listener (especially a white one), making Levine’s disgraced end about your own experience rather than that of Levine’s victims or the institutions that enabled him, first of all, Robin DiAngelo has a term for that, and you should check out her book. Second, if you have enjoyed Levine’s performances, if you have fond memories of them that you want to cherish, you might start by considering that a term like “Levine’s performances” is not really accurate. As a conductor Levine did not make any sound. The countless men, women, and non-binary people who played in the orchestra, sang in the chorus, were soloists, etc., however, did. It is unnecessarily hierarchical, callous, and insulting to marginalize their contributions. Clearly, the convention of crediting an orchestra's very identity to its conductor is not specific to Levine, but endemic to the classical music industry as a whole, one of very many things that must change in our discourse. As I said earlier, conductors have too much power. (I know because I am one.)
Speaking of these aforementioned musicians—the professional instrumentalists and singers—Levine’s death happens in the wake of the Metropolitan Opera having treated its orchestra and chorus monstrously and inhumanely for nearly a year: it furloughed these artists without pay in April 2020, even after having paid Levine a $3.5 million settlement. The final line of Anthony Tommasini’s disgraceful apologia for Levine is thus a paternalistic platitude masquerading as a call for the Met to do the right thing: “[o]ne way for the Met to honor the best elements of Levine’s hopelessly tarnished legacy would be to save the magnificent orchestra he built.” To read a critic in The New York Times speaking of professional musicians as if they are Levine’s children, subjects, or playthings, and not very real human beings and workers struggling through a global pandemic, is truly breathtaking.
What we—the classical music community, and yes, I am looking especially hard at you, fellow white cis-dudes—can do is reflect honestly, even if it is is very painful (how could it not be?), on our role in perpetuating and supporting an industry that allows a career like Levine’s. Levine is not merely the proverbial bad apple (though don’t forget what the bad apple does to the barrel), or an isolated incident, but part of a much larger system that enables such abuses. We must make real, substantive, possibly radical, changes—not reforms. Frankly, I am skeptical that we will do this, but I hope I am wrong.
… and if at the end of this op-ed you still find yourself saying a version of “... but he was a great musician,” you are part of the problem.